Time and Attendance systems are used primarily in work forces where employees are paid by the hour, and where records of start and stop time must be maintained. These records are often called “punches”, because a common device used to collect start and stop times is a time-clock, which in its older electromechanical versions, actually punched a timestamp on a time card. Modern time clocks, or terminals, typically use magnetically or optically encoded cards that are “swiped” through a magnetic or optical card reader which records the “punch”. Other ways of collecting punches are by a hand-written time sheet, a computer program such as STARstation, a telephone, a cash register, or a biometrics device such as a hand or fingerprint reader.